Machinery Directive and Industrial Valves
The European Commission opened a public consultation on the revision of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EU during the period of summer. In parallel, the European Commission mandated VVA consulting to conduct interviews with EU Member States' representatives, as well as relevant European associations. CEIR submitted its contribution to this consultation and replied to the interview with VVA Consulting.
CEIR is generally satisfied with the current scope and provisions of the Directive. In the section on definitions, CEIR considers that the current definitions are appropriate and that it is not necessary to revise them, but recalls that the concepts of "defined applications" need to be better explained through guidelines.
Thus, CEIR requested consistency with the interpretation resulting from the 1999 Commission guide on this concept directly concerning valves (§65 & §66) which do not fall within the scope of the Machinery Directive. Indeed, motorised valves, actuated valves and valves intended to be equipped with actuators are not subject to the Machinery Directive as they do not fully comply with the definition of the machine. They have no specific application, are not only intended to be integrated into machines and must therefore be considered as an ordinary component.
Here, the Contribution to the Public Consultation and the CEIR supporting Document.